New life for mountain bike trails, paved rides and a wild nest
Somewhere in a wet area near you, the music of washboards and "peep, peep, peep" is now bearing an Easter-like story. It means that a natural antifreeze has worked, allowing the bodies of spring peepers and chorus frogs to slumber safely beneath the ice of winter and then thaw out. Their voices resurrect spring as they call to mate.
Listen for them here, but not yet in Grayling, Mich., where I caught late-season cross-country skiing last week in the remaining snow/ice pack (on the trails of Forbush Corner) — nor further north across the bridge in Michigan's Upper Peninsula, which was socked with 18 inches of heavy wet snow. But it may be tricky for trail keepers up there to maintain or groom such damp snow with all of the freezing and thawing to come.
Isn't geography cool?
Here's the latest on what's happening with wild eggs, wildflowers and bicycle riding.
Nest egg watches
The peregrine falcon pair in the nest atop South Bend’s County-City Building laid their fifth egg a week ago. It came just hours after the deadline for last week’s column, where I said there were four eggs. Now it’s officially a full nest. If you watch the online falcon camera, expect the hatching season to begin sometime in late April, since incubation for falcons typically takes 28 to 32 days.
Meanwhile, it’s looking like slim chances for the American bald eagle pair to lay eggs at St. Patrick’s County Park in South Bend. If so, it would mark the first time that eagles there haven’t laid an egg since 2015. The latest they’d ever laid an egg there was March 5 in 2020.
“They’ve been surprising us quite a bit this year, so I wouldn’t be shocked if they did lay an egg,” says Brett Peters, who runs the University of Notre Dame’s live eagle cam.
Feb. 23, 2023: Female missing in eagle nest. New one appears. And it's time to lay eggs.
Generally, he notes, it takes about 35 days for laid eggs to incubate and hatch. And in our region, he says, that typically ends at the end of April.
A pair of eagles has been tending the nest, but the resident female of the past few years has been missing since mid-February. A new female took her place.
Spring Wildflower BioBlitz
Elkhart County Parks has just begun a scavenger hunt through May 31 where, if you find wildflowers anywhere in Elkhart County, you can snap a photo and share it through the iNaturalist app on your phone.
You can identify the plant yourself, make notes about it or, if you’re puzzled about it at all, let others on iNaturalist help to identify it. It’s part learning for you, part seeing what others are finding and part helping as a citizen scientist to document what’s out there.
The app is free to download. Once you have it, you can look up “Wildflower BioBlitz: Elkhart County 2023.” Find full instructions about using the app in a link here in this column online.
What’s that fish?
Need help identifying a fish that you caught? Biologists with the Indiana Department of Natural Resources will help if you email a photo of it with some information like where you caught it, your name and your permission for the DNR to use the photo in educational purposes. Find more details on how this works in a link here in this column online.
Mountain bike trail prep
One of the spring rituals of mountain biking is grabbing tools and joining work days to maintain local trails.
Without volunteer labor, we wouldn’t have the majority of local mountain bike trails. Spring is a key season for the work before vegetation sprouts and spreads. Sweating together is also a good way to find new biking comrades. And it’s a great learning experience since helpers are always needed year round to clear tree limbs that tumble on the trails.
The Northern Indiana Mountain Bike Association invites anyone to help from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. each Saturday now through May 6 — including runners and hikers who use the same bike trails. Work as little or as much as you can. Got kids? Bring them. Not sure how to do trail maintenance? The club will show you.
The work days will be at Potato Creek State Park in North Liberty on April 8, at Bonneyville Mill County Park in Bristol on April 15, at Rum Village Park in South Bend on April 22, at Bendix Woods County Park in New Carlisle on April 29 and at Soldiers Memorial Park in LaPorte on May 6.
Bring gloves. Tools and lunch will be provided. Expect to do some trimming, picking up debris and making minor repairs. You may help to assess trail conditions.
But don’t expect to do any major reroutes or redesigns. NIMBA President Jim Hary says the club plans to do a major update to each trail each year, starting once the wet spring season is done. Stay tuned for details.
Look for updates and trail details at NIMBA’s Facebook page.
Also this spring, NIMBA officially flipped the switch, breaking off its membership to the International Mountain Bicycling Association. As Hary told me in a column last year, this will allow the club to use all of its membership dues to invest in local trails. Also, NIMBA will have its own membership at its website — volunteers hope to have it ready soon.
IMBA had served as good training wheels, so to speak, as NIMBA developed over the years. IMBA had collected member fees for the group and provided technical support for building trails, statistics to advocate for new trails and referrals to grants. That’s all good, but nearly 28 years after it began, NIMBA and its volunteers feel they’ve got the resources to do those things. NIMBA gained its own tax-exempt status more than a year ago.
Hary and NIMBA still encourage bikers to support IMBA financially on their own, not only to gain discounts but to fuel trail advocacy on a national level.
Bikes on trains
On Saturday, the South Shore Line began its annual season of allowing bikes on certain trains, but bikes can only roll on board this year between East Chicago, Ind., and Chicago. That's because of the ongoing construction on South Shore’s double-track project.
So, you won’t be able to board bikes in South Bend or at Dune Park in 2023. The South Shore is bussing passengers between South Bend and East Chicago during construction. And where there’s bussing, there won’t be bikes allowed.
Bussing in those sections will run through the end of this year and perhaps into early spring 2024, says Mike Noland, president of the South Shore’s parent company, the Northern Indiana Commuter Transportation District.
The new double track, which is being built between Michigan City and Chicago, should be done and running by May 2024, Noland tells me, adding, “I know it’s an inconvenience, but the railroad we open up at that point in time will have significant new opportunities for bikes on trains up and down the line."
Find a link here in this column online for the South Shore’s full bikes-on-trains schedule and details.
Bike together
Want to ride paved trails and roads with other cyclists who won’t leave you far behind? The Michiana Bicycle Association has begun its weekly group rides where anyone with a helmet is welcome. That includes sociable rides at 6 p.m. each Monday from South Bend's Pinhook Park, following the paved trail to Niles and back at a pace so that everyone stays together. Helmets are required.
The MBA also hosts rides on Tuesdays, Wednesdays, Saturdays and Sundays on a rotating schedule of sites. For more information, visit mbabike.com.
Meanwhile, Spin Zone Cycling Outfitters in Granger has started a calendar of rides by various groups throughout this year. Find it or submit your group's rides at spinzonecycling.com/calendar.
Find columnist Joseph Dits on Facebook at SBTOutdoorAdventures or 574-235-6158 or jdits@sbtinfo.com.
This article originally appeared on South Bend Tribune: NIMBA volunteers start mountain bike trail work days; falcons lay eggs
